Molly - Sarah Monzon Page 0,1

not a pillar of the Montessori method? Would Maria Montessori have wanted teachers to redirect a student when their curiosity had been sparked?”

“I see what you’re doing, Molly, but it’s not going to work. Knowledge and discovery need to be appropriate for the child’s age and development.”

I placed my hand palm down on the top of her desk, reaching in her direction as if I could pull her toward my way of thinking. “Who are we to say what a child is ready for? If they ask a question, shouldn’t we be prepared to answer it?”

Mrs. Bardowski didn’t miss a beat. Neither the sunburst-patterned lines around her eyes nor the parentheses around her mouth flinched. She crossed her arms over her chest. “No.”

I blinked, taken aback. No? A student asked a question in the classroom and we as teachers weren’t supposed to answer truthfully?

“You do not tell a group of three- to six-year-olds that Santa isn’t real—”

I sat up straighter. “But if grown-ups lie to kids, then their faith in our word is shaken. What else might they suspect we lied about? They could conclude that Jesus, like Santa, can’t be seen, and if an adult lied to them about Santa, then perhaps they’re lying about God as well.”

But Mrs. Bardowski continued like I hadn’t said a word. “And you can’t explain to a five-year-old what a tampon is.”

My cheeks heated. Whether from her direct glare or the way she’d said tampon—a two-syllable bark that evoked a guilty sentence all on its own—I wasn’t sure. “In my defense, Cyrus was rummaging around in my bag without permission. I tried to answer his initial inquiry of what the object he was waving around was called and what it was used for with as little detail as possible.”

All the while trying to shield the way he brandished the female hygiene product like a sword, a sure-fire way to attract the other boys. Mrs. Bardowski may think my handling of the situation had been reprehensible, but it could have been so much worse. If Thomas had gotten a glimpse of what he would no doubt have considered a great object to pretend to be a dagger, there could have been a full-fledged duel of menstrual proportions.

I sighed. “He kept asking why. He led the conversation, Mrs. Bardowski.” And didn’t that signal his readiness to learn?

“This is what I mean by common sense, Molly. You tell Cyrus that it isn’t right going through other people’s things and that if he has any questions to ask his mother. Then you go to his mother and explain the events of the day so that she can be prepared to answer Cyrus, not you.”

Easy for Mrs. Bardowski to say. She hadn’t had Cyrus shooting off whys like bullets in a machine gun. And I hadn’t gone into detail. I’d kept everything scientific. The body had different systems. We even taught units on the skeletal and muscular systems. Why did people get all weirded out by reproductive organs?

Besides, I thought most parents had a problem with privacy when they had small kids. As in, they no longer had any. As in, their kids followed them everywhere, even to the bathroom, and picked the lock if the mom even tried to keep them out. How had Cyrus’s mom been able to keep her hygiene products hidden from her son for so long?

“Molly.”

I snapped my attention back to Mrs. Bardowski. Her eyebrows were raised expectantly. I rolled my lips between my teeth. I knew what she wanted, but I couldn’t give her the assurances she required—that I would cover the truth in a blanket of, well, what she called common sense but I considered suggestio falsi. Or, for those of us who don’t actually speak Latin, a big fat lie.

I could give her some reassurance though. “There were no mentions of birds, bees, or special hugs. I didn’t use, you know, that three letter word. I didn’t tell him at all how babies are made or where they come from. Just facts. Scientific facts about the human body.”

Whereas her fake poppy pin still appeared as fresh as the day it had come out of the factory, Mrs. Bardowski wilted. She rested her forearms against her desk and looked at me like I was a puppy in the pound and my euthanasia date had come up. “I really hate doing this, Molly, but I’m going to have to let you go.”

My palms felt clammy, and I retracted my hand from Mrs.